AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
I.
In "a memorandum of later years," quoted by his biographer, Mr. Gladstone defined his own understanding of "the special commission under which the Government had taken office" in 1880. "It related to the foreign policy of the country, the whole spirit and effect of which we were to reconstruct." Sir Charles's views as to the need for this had long been before the public, and he threw all his energies into the task of helping to achieve it.
'The Liberals, having come into office after violent denunciation of the whole foreign and colonial policy of their predecessors, had a general wish to reverse it in all parts of the world, and to dismiss the agents by whom it had been carried out. They were especially violent against Lytton in India, Layard at Constantinople, and Frere in South Africa.'
Questions of the Indian frontier and Africa lay outside the immediate sphere of the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, yet he was constantly consulted upon both of them, and had his full part in defending the reversal of Lord Lytton's policy by the new Viceroy, Lord Ripon, who restored, or perhaps established, the unity of Afghanistan.
In the matter of South Africa, the Boer leaders wrote at once to express their confidence that the new Government would consist of "men who look out for the honour and glory of England, not by acts of injustice and crushing force, but by the way of justice and good faith." They were answered by promises of local self-government, but such promises had been made to them before, and the retention of Sir Bartle Frere no doubt seemed a bad omen. So, at all events, it was regarded by the Radical party. On May 24th—
'I found that Courtney and my brother, with Dr. Cameron and Jesse Collings, were getting up an attempt to coerce the Colonial Office and Mr. Gladstone by preparing a list of between one and two hundred members who would vote with Wilfrid Lawson for a censure on the Government for not recalling Frere. Childers had found that it would be easy to recall him, for Frere had said that he would only go out for two years, and the two years were over. No doubt Frere, while blameworthy for the Zulu War, was not responsible for the Transvaal business, which had been done by Shepstone and Lord Carnarvon before he went out; but with our people he received the whole discredit for all that went wrong in South Africa, and it was impossible to wonder at this when one recalled the language that he habitually made use of….
'Frere was protected by Mr. Gladstone, and allowed to remain, a mistake for which we very gravely suffered. As this matter became of great importance in 1899, I ought to add that Lord Granville backed Mr. Gladstone in abstaining from rescinding the annexation of the Transvaal, on the ground that as we were retiring from Kandahar we had better not also retire from Pretoria.'
When, a few months later, the Boer rising followed, Dilke, with three other Radical Ministers, Bright, Chamberlain, and Courtney, refused to defend the Government's action even by a silent vote. 'Everything went as badly as possible in South Africa, and Lord Kimberley' (the Colonial Secretary) 'must share the blame with Mr. Gladstone.'
The third instance in which the recall of a man was demanded by Liberal opinion as essential to the reversal of a policy touched matters in whose development Sir Charles had a considerable part to play: